


Run Me Out to the Edge of Town

by sequence_fairy



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Desert Bonding Time, First Kiss, Hoverbike Adventures, M/M, SHIRO LOVES KEITH, Shiro cries about trees and that is a v me thing for him to do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:22:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: Shiro leans hard into the turn, his finally refurbished hoverbike kicking up a rooster tail of dust as he races along the dry riverbed. He’s headed deep into what’s left of Monument Valley. The wind howls in his ears, tangling through his hair and buffeting him as he pushes the hoverbike to the high end of its throttle. The engine whines and the bike shudders through a rough shift as Shiro kicks it up one more gear. Beneath him, the ground passes in a blur.Ahead of him, kicking up a dust trail of his own is Keith.The desert remains their haunt of choice, still.After the war, Shiro and Keith find some time to watch some stars in the desert.





	Run Me Out to the Edge of Town

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hchano](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hchano/gifts).

> For H, who won my giveaway on twitter when I hit 200 followers. I hope you love this babe. <3
> 
> Thanks to Kelsey for the beta! As always, she makes everything better.

The early evening light turns to deep gold as the sun hangs lower and lower in the sky. Shadows lengthen and stretch, becoming distorted facsimiles of their sources. Shiro leans hard into the turn, his finally refurbished hoverbike kicking up a rooster tail of dust as he races along the dry riverbed. He’s headed deep into what’s left of Monument Valley. The wind howls in his ears, tangling through his hair and buffeting him as he pushes the hoverbike to the high end of its throttle. The engine whines and the bike shudders through a rough shift as Shiro kicks it up one more gear. Beneath him, the ground passes in a blur. 

Ahead of him, kicking up a dust trail of his own is Keith. 

The desert remains their haunt of choice, still. Shiro knows Keith used to escape out here, knows that Keith escaped, with finality, out here, knows that Keith thinks of the sand and the cactii and the tiny lizards racing across the rocky ground as the place where he is most at home, second only to the cockpit of a faster than lightspeed ship. Shiro misses the feeling of home, wonders if anything is left of the place he grew up, if anything remains in San Francisco that he would recognize.

Shiro sends the bike into a skidding slide around a raised island of scrub grasses with a cactus growing tall in the centre. Shiro pushes the bike forward again, drawing even with Keith as he slows down. 

Pulled back into a loose braid, tendrils escape Keith’s hair and frame his face as he turns to look at Shiro, silently confirming the rest of their planned route. The mirrored lenses of his goggles hide Keith’s eyes, but Shiro can read the question in the lift of Keith’s jaw. Shiro nods, and they’re off again, headed for a lookout Keith remembered liking when he was young. 

This is the first time in weeks that either of them have been able to escape the bustle of cleaning up and re-organizing. Shiro’s trying hard not to feel guilty about taking some time for himself as he follows Keith further into the desert. They are, neither of them, dispensable and both have been working night and day to help Earth shore up her remaining communications while maintaining the defensive perimeter and assisting with the multitudes of displaced people. Shiro’s never been more exhausted, nor has he been less able to rest. He’s sure Keith feels the same. 

Keith pulls his bike to a sliding stop at the base of a slope, a cloud of dust rising as he does. Shiro downshifts, cutting the throttle back gently so he can come to a soft rest next to Keith. 

They both take a moment to look out over the scrubland and towards the desert proper. The sun has always been merciless out here, and Shiro can feel the heat of it even as it sets, rising from the hard-packed earth beneath his bike. Out ahead of him, the buttes rise from the desert floor, silent sentinels against the oncoming night, burnished and glowing in the setting sun. The sight makes something loosen in Shiro’s chest. 

Monument Valley was spared for the most part, during the occupation, a fact that Shiro is grateful for. The first time he’d stepped out into the ruins of the Olympic National Forest, burned and razed, he’d been unable to see for the tears that had suddenly clouded his vision. Keith’s steady presence at his side had been the only thing that kept him from running back up the gangplank to puke. He’d struggled with it after, worrying that crying over trees and not people was a sign that something was broken in him, fundamentally. Keith had sat with him on a downed log, hands between his knees, saying nothing as they’d stared out at the wreck of one of the last remaining old growth forests in the entire world. 

Shattered cities were one thing, but humanity, even at its worst and most violent, had never destroyed nature in the callous way the Galra had burned through it. Shiro thinks he might hate them more for that than anything else. He’d seen it on other planets occupied by the empire, and it had stung then, but seeing it here… Shiro’s not sure how Earth will ever recover. 

The biome is so fragile, so carefully balanced, even the smallest thing can throw it out of whack permanently. Shiro’s seen the news reports, and he’s read the briefings from the Garrison scientists. Humanity had slowed the race of inevitable warming, after the third world war had broken out and nearly cost the entire planet for the sake of corporate greed, but whatever gains humanity had made, the Galra had undermined, twice over. 

The very air is different now. 

“Sunset’s in fifteen,” Keith says, over the rumble of the bike engines. “Wanna head up?” Keith lifts his chin towards the trail that switchbacks up to the top of a plateau. 

Keith pushes his goggles up onto his forehead, so he can see Shiro more clearly in the gathering dusk. Keith’s eyes are bright and focused, in the way that he always gets when he’s flying. He looks at home astride the hoverbike. 

He always did, Shiro thinks, remembering a younger Keith and a more cobbled together hoverbike. He’s also remembering another time, before aliens and robot lions, when the world seemed like a place where magic might happen instead of a place where it seethed and grew in the shadows, ready to steal the very soul from your body. 

“Shiro?” Keith’s voice cuts through the white noise fuzz of memory in Shiro’s head. 

Shiro shakes himself. “Yeah,” he says, answering Keith’s earlier question, “last one up’s on KP for a week.” 

Shiro revs the engine of his bike, before hauling it into a tight turn and opening it up. Never mind that there’s no such thing as KP duty now, nor that neither he nor Keith would ever be expected to work anything like it if there was, it’s the same threat he’d always made before–well, before.

“Fucking cheat!” Keith yells after him, but he’s laughing. He follows Shiro up the hill, both of them skirting dangerously close to the trail edges and the sheer drops as they rise over the valley. 

Shiro wins, but only because most of the path is too narrow for Keith to pass him. 

“Better get those dishwashing hands ready,” Shiro teases as he slides off his bike, pulling his helmet off and shaking his head. He sets the helmet down on the bike seat, and pushes his hand through his hair, lifting his bangs up from where they’ve been plastered to his forehead. Keith tosses him a jaunty middle-fingered salute, and then casts himself down at the edge of the plateau, facing the setting sun. 

The rock is still sun-warm under them as they sit at the edge, legs dangling out into empty space. 

“You know what,” Keith says, into the silence. Shiro looks over. Keith is playing with the keys to his hoverbike, turning them over and over in his hands. He looks up and catches Shiro’s eyes. They both startle and look away. 

Shiro huffs a laugh, and pushes one hand through his hair. Keith’s mouth curves up in half a grin. 

“I know a lot of things,” Shiro deadpans, when Keith doesn’t continue. Keith punches him, sharply, in the shoulder. Shiro brings up his other hand to rub at his arm. The new prosthetic, fitted after the end of the war, feels almost like skin. Keith flexes his hand, shaking it out. 

“Serves you right,” Shiro says, “beating up a disabled man like that. You’re a menace to society.” 

Keith laughs, bright and fond. He leans back onto his palms, tilting his head back so he can look up at the sky. Shiro waits. Keith isn’t the most forthcoming of people, but he’ll talk if you give him the space to do it in. 

“I wake up thinking we’re still fighting,” Keith says, directing his words to the gathering dark.

“I do, too,” Shiro answers. He still wakes up to phantom alarms on the castleship and the remembered press of the lionbond against his consciousness. His therapist says it’s the trauma, and Shiro isn’t disinclined to disagree, but he’s also frustrated by the lack of easy answers. She reminds him, not unkindly, in each of their sessions, that eventually, it will get easier and that the memories will fade. “It’s hard to turn it off.”

Keith’s head turns and he looks at Shiro. His gaze is almost calculating. Shiro meets Keith’s eyes; they’re shadowed in the dying light.

“How do you do it?” Keith asks.

“Do what?” 

“You just keep going, like it’s no problem, like you’re not affected at all. I don’t understand. I close my eyes and all I can see is tracer lights and the castleship exploding. I keep hearing a ziforge cannon powering up, the whine of it–” Keith cuts himself off. 

“Shit, Keith, I’m not unaffected at all.” 

“Sure you are! You just keep on getting up and moving forward and I’m stuck in this loop of remembering all the shit that happened to us and that we were part of and I can’t break out of it, and, God,” Keith’s voice breaks, “Shiro, I’ve tried.” 

“I still wake up screaming more nights than not,” Shiro admits, quiet. It makes Keith jolt. 

“Shiro,” Keith says, shocked, almost wounded. 

“You’re not alone, Keith,” Shiro replies, reaching out to drop his hand on Keith’s shoulder. Where Keith used to be bony, now he’s filled out and firm and steady against the weight of Shiro’s hand. “It’s hard,” he says, “but the way I handle it is to just keep going; find something to keep busy with and when you’re done with that, find the next thing. It’s only bad when I stop moving.” Shiro’s voice turns wistful. 

“Being with you helps,” Shiro says, after a moment. There’s always been a stillness to Keith, like he’s a quiet place where Shiro can put down his burdens and rest for just a moment. 

“Me too,” Keith says, looking down at where his hands are curled in his lap. “Sometimes, I just get so … so overwhelmed,” Keith admits. 

Shiro nods, even though Keith’s not looking at him. Keith sighs, noisily. 

“It’s stupid,” Keith says, but Shiro’s quick to disagree, making Keith raise an eyebrow at him. Shiro shrugs. 

“Nothing you feel is stupid, Keith,” Shiro says. 

“I’m not a baby cadet anymore, you know,” Keith grouses, but there’s something vulnerable in the curve of his mouth. 

“Hey! I know that,” Shiro says, sincerely. He does, he truly does. Keith hasn’t been the small-for-his-age cadet Shiro took under his wing for years, and gosh, Shiro has noticed. The Keith beside him on the cliff is broader, taller, more confident, but also weighed down by more trauma. “I also know that we’re both pretty good at bottling shit up instead of sharing it with someone.” 

The night sky darkens further above them, the sun sunk beneath the horizon. 

They’re sitting close, shoulder to shoulder, almost touching. Neither says anything for a long time after Shiro’s pronouncement, but the silence is comfortable. 

Keith slumps a little and Shiro shifts and they end up resting against each other, watching as the stars come out above them, the heavens darkening to a deep ink. 

The warmth of Keith’s shoulder against Shiro’s is grounding. It is quiet out here, and for the first time in weeks, Shiro doesn’t feel restless in the silence. He’s missed this. Missed spending time with just Keith, who he never has to be ‘on’ for, who Shiro can relax with in a way that he can’t with anyone else. 

“I’m really glad you’re here,” Shiro says, before he can overthink himself out of it. He’s never been good at telling people what he’s feeling, but he feels like given what he just said to Keith about bottling shit up, that maybe he should take his own advice for a change. He’s worried about saying it aloud though, concerned that Keith might think he’s overstepping. They’ve just found their way back to even footing, and are still navigating the new bounds of their friendship, changed as it has been by the war they both fought and bled for. Shiro doesn’t want to shake the delicate balance they have re-achieved apart. 

Keith stiffens, but doesn’t pull away from Shiro’s side. Shiro’s too busy trying to find the right way to backpedal, to laugh this off and make it less than it was, to notice that Keith’s still pressed against him, shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. 

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” 

The raw honesty in Keith’s voice cuts Shiro all the way down to the quick. Keith has to know, Shiro thinks, has to know how much Shiro cares, has to know how very desperately Shiro wants to hold on and never let go, how pathetically grateful Shiro is that Keith never did, not once. 

Keith looks up at him, all wide-eyed and lovely, and it makes Shiro’s breath stutter. He’s beautiful, Shiro decides, with the first stars peeking out over head. Keith shines in the starlight. 

“Oh,” he says, and watches, breathless, as Keith’s smile blooms. The real one is always worth the wait; it changes Keith’s whole face. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro catches the glimmer of a shooting star.

“Yeah,” Keith husks. 

Shiro’s heart thunders in his ears. They’re on a precipice here, one Shiro has kept walking them back from. Keith’s gaze dips to Shiro’s mouth, and then back up to meet Shiro’s eyes with his own.

Shiro swallows.

Keith leans in and then all Shiro knows is the heat of Keith’s mouth against his own and Keith’s hands fisted in the front of his jacket, pulling Shiro closer.

Home, Shiro decides, as he breaks away to rest his forehead against Keith’s, this is home.

**Author's Note:**

> Please come and chat with me about my fic on [tumblr](http://sequencefairy.tumblr.com) or on [twitter](https://twitter.com/warpspeed_chic).


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